“Gone are the days of helplessness; I see a bright future in front of me”: Mulunesh Tolosa
My name is Mulunesh Tolosa. I dropped out of school when I was in 11th grade and got married.
My younger sister was selected as a beneficiary of the CFTC project because we lost both our parents. When our parents died, my sister had nowhere to go, so she started living with me. I gave birth to my child shortly after they died. Unfortunately, my husband, who was the bread winner of the house abandoned me around this time as well. As I had no income of my own, I couldn’t feed myself let alone my sister. I had no work experience; neither did I have the money to start a business. Our only choice was to stay in our house and starve. This was the worst period in my entire life.
Government office workers who knew of our problems facilitated the acceptance of my sister in ISAPSO’s CFTC project. My sister began to get educational and food support from the project. As families of children supported by the project are also considered, I joined a self-help group and started to save some money on a weekly basis.
Through the project we also received training that would help us make our start-up businesses more productive. We learned of the importance of saving; therefore, I cut down on unnecessary expenditures. Apart from what we saved, the project also provided us with financial support.
I started my business with a 1000-birr loan I got from the self-help group. I started selling children’s clothes throughout small villages around Chancho town and made decent revenue.
After I got the second and third rounds of loans from my groups, my group my capital grew to 5000 birr. With this money, I began to trade adult clothes in addition to children’s clothes. As my income increased, I joined an Equb (Amharic word for ‘mutual aid group’) and collected 10,000 birr. By combining the 10,000 birr I got from the Equb with my savings of 4,000 birr from my group, I brought a plot of land and built a three-room residential house with 14,000 birr. Even then, I had not stopped saving, I saved weekly without interruption. I deposit my daily profits into my bank account. Currently, I have property worth about 60,000 birr. I have no doubt I can make a lot more progress in the future because I now know the secret behind success: saving and planning.
Being organized under an association is another important factor to success. It was difficult for me to socialize before I joined the self-help group, but I have now developed the skills. It has enabled me to learn from my peers’ experiences and this has helped me to develop my speaking skills.
I’m now planning to acquire a permanent place for my business. Having said all that, I’m fully aware that I couldn’t have succeeded without the generous support of ISHDO and the CFTC project.”